Chakma letter Laa

It represents the l sound in Chakma.

Chakma consonant letters normally include an inherent long aa vowel. A vowel sign changes that vowel; the virama mark suppresses it. A 2001 orthographic recommendation includes laa among five consonants used in its standard cluster repertoire.

Chakma writing has a long recorded history

Community histories report written references to the Chakma people from the 10th century onward and describe palm-leaf manuscripts in the Brahmi script, an older South Asian writing system, handed down by elders. A separate script catalogue records the first Western description of Chakma writing in 1903; neither date tells us when 𑄣 itself first appeared.

As of 2026-09-14, the Chakma Autonomous District Council describes Boidyos, village medicine practitioners, preserving Chakma writing to record medicinal plants, herbs and roots. Chakma literacy is also part of language-preservation and community-identity work: the script distinguishes Chakma writing from Bengali writing, while 𑄣 itself supplies only the l sound.

A script catalogue places Chakma in the Mon-Burmese family of scripts; a 2009 Unicode proposal compares how its writing system works with Myanmar. Reported visual similarities to Khmer or Lanna scripts do not by themselves prove descent.

How do I type 𑄣?

In the published Linux layout, press Latin l.

The Institute of Policy Dynamics’ v1.0.0 phonetic Chakma layout maps l to 𑄣; Shift+l produces another Chakma consonant. This shortcut works only while that layout is active. A box, blank space or misplaced mark can signal missing font coverage or shaping support; Unicode display guidance checked 2026-09-14 describes these as rendering failures.